the city mouse and the country mouse

i wake to the full volume shrieking from the house next door of, of all the music from all the musicians in all the world, air supply's greatest hits album... for the Nth time, where N is approaching infinity... at 6am in the friggin' morning. my cellphone alarm hadn't even rung yet. i get up, i grumble, i have no choice. then i remember, it's friday the 13th. a good sign. i zip through my bath, my breakfast, my dressing up: a zombie, a machine, a robot. then i step out of the house for my commute to work.

not yet 20 meters away from the door, there is a shrill beeping behind me: a habal2x driver in a hurry. but the already tiny street, made even tinier by the jeepney driver who considered our tiny street as free parking space, is just too tiny for the both of us to pass through comfortably. the driver has no choice but to let me pass first. i continue walking.

i pass through, the habal2x behind me, still beeping. it passes through, and the driver hits his breaks in front of me to block my path. he tells me he was blowing his horn. i tell him yes, i'm not deaf. he tells me maybe i am. i tell him to fuck off. he glares at me, i glare back, then he goes on his way, beeping away all the other pedestrians in his path. my words startle me; did i just say that? i continue walking.

the street is pockmarked with potholes and littered with dog shit and random pieces of trash. to the left, the smells of buwad (dried salted fish) frying and plastic burning mingling with the decay of dog shit. to the right, another house arrayed with giant speakers near its gates, this time pounding the eardrums of all residents within a 200 meter radius with that most infamous staple of mid 90s diskorals: the macarena. and walking toward me, a grimy woman dragging her own grimy son, who is bawling out with all his lungs, and the mother threatening the boy with a broom. ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my neighborhood.

i finally emerge at the eskina, a tricycle waiting to transport me from the hell of my neighborhood to the hell of my office cubicle. i hop on. the driver, not yet satisfied with his passengers, waits, the tricycle's engine humming its impatience all the while.

a man emerges. his hair is wet, combed back and clean. he is wearing a clean blue polo, cleanly ironed jeans, and cracked leather shoes brushed clean. but on his astringent clean face is the bewildered look of a lost man.

in his right hand, a clear plastic envelope. in it, sheets of bond paper, and on the top sheet, a pasted 2x2 id picture, and in big black bold letters, the word 'BIODATA'. he approaches the driver.

in a singsong bisaya spoken in dalaguete and southern cebu, he asks if we were going to the highway. the driver tells him to hop on. he looks at the tricycle like it was some alien spacecraft, unsure of what to do. he takes his seat in the sidecar. the driver revs up his engine. off we go.

it's starting to get hot, and the traffic is running slow and heavy. with the driver deftly negotiating the obstacles of the road, we reach the highway. the bewildered man asks the driver to stop so he could get off. but it was a still a 'no stopping' zone, and a traffic policeman was standing in a discrete corner, a wolf waiting to pounce on its unsuspecting prey. the driver tells him, 'sa unahan' (a bit farther off). another 10 meters, and the bewildered man again asks the driver to stop so he could get off. the driver answers him again, 'sa unahan', his annoyance now ringing clear in his voice.

we finally reach our stop. all of us passengers get off. i hand my money to the driver, mutter under my breath a 'good luck' to the bewildered man, then proceed to the jeepney stop across the street. it takes me a full 20 minutes to get my ride. as our jeepney fights its way through the traffic on the highway, a metaphor for the sad realities of living in the city presents itself to me.

there laying on the highway, under the growing heat of the sun: the raw, bloody, mangled carcass of what had been a dog. and no one thinking it worth stopping for: the jeepneys and cars on their morning rush, the trucks and vans going on with their deliveries, the pedestrians on the street waiting in vain to get their ride, the cigarette vendor anticipating the traffic to slow down so he could peddle his goods, another traffic policeman sitting under the shade of the nearby bakery, idly watching the rest of the world on its senseless turning. and no one coming to clean the mess up.

our jeepney finally finds open road, and the driver steps on the gas. the wind in my face, i reflect over the dead dog. then i remember the bewildered man; i hope he doesn't end up as roadkill.